Lil Wayne’s Magical Styrofoam Cup This article was sent to my e-mail today from the Global Grind & all I could do was shake my head in disbelief of just how off track & out of control we have become as a nation, at a time when we must all take responsibility particularly for the sake of our suffering youth. Speaking with many of my family/friends who are educators, I realize more & more how incredibly hard their job is & how much harder it becomes when they are left to watch over poisoned minds in a world where anything & everything goes as a young person, as long as you have money or local/global celebrity status. These educators who go above & beyond definitely deserve more pay for their work because from some of the stories I have been hearing-they are left to multitask as educators, disciplinarians, and psychologist to so many lost/discarded youth that are just looking for that 1 person who really cares enough to give them that much needed push.

This type of story doesn’t help these educators when they are dealing with youth that see someone like Lil Wayne as a hero & want to follow in his footsteps to success. To suggest that as long as one is having continual success, their destructive behavior shouldn’t matter & should be pretty much praised for their rate of success is a dangerous line to walk with our youth. We have had way too many of our heroes & superstars die because of destructive behaviors with alcohol, drug abuse & other things. We always come with our tears & anger after the fact saying someone should have stepped in to give help, or that we didn’t know that the destructive behavior would ever lead to death when we clearly knew because we have seen it happen over & over again -generation after generation.

After seeing Lil Wayne’s Behind the Music story on VH1 – I became impressed by him as an artist and a human being, as well as saddened by him as an artist & a human being. To me he is the Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, Michael Jackson, Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin, Kirk Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, etc. of this generation; a troubled genius in his craft with countless enablers who would not dare to say no to him because their livelihood whether directly or indirectly is dependent on his continual success in his craft, by any means necessary. Lil Wayne was a child who had to grow up quick to make sure others were taken care of & as long as he was doing that no one could say no to him. I watched Rihanna’s interview with Diane Swayer as she said “imagine being a little girl & no one saying no to you”. She spoke about Chris Brown not having any soul in his eyes the night he brutally abused her, but I also saw no soul in her eyes as she did this interview, almost as a coping mechanism to take herself out of the situation because she had come to the “F’ love” point in her life when love is exactly what we all need & desire to cope with life’s trials & to become successful human beings.

We are raising a generation with no soul in their eyes to block the pain & a generation who feel like they need to not give a f*ck in order to get thru the pain. As elders, family, friends,fans, educators, journalists and members of a global human community, we MUST give a f*ck & take responsibility for the messages, acceptances in behavior & glorifications of behavior that we send/promote to our youth in order not to have a completely dysfunctional society. The obsession with celebrity youth culture & the incredibly bad behavior that we reward constantly in so many ways is sending all the wrong messages not only to the fans, but also to the celebrities that are living these lives who are still young & need guidance & love.

What messages are we sending when we don’t stand up for the proper guidance & love of our youth & basically become enablers or those who throw their hands up & say well he/she is not my problem? No one can tell a grown man/woman what to do, but glorifying bad behavior, paying homage to it & being an enabler is dead wrong. I wish the person who wrote this article for Global Grind could step in a day in the life of my educator friends & family, who are the true soldiers dealing with the aftermath of the glorification of the bad behavior & examples being set forth for our youth to emulate or to see as no big deal! Life is a big deal & one little misstep can take it away. There are things we can’t control about losing life, but there are preventative measures we can take in prolonging life whether it is ours or someone else’s.

Case & point: my cousin who is a substitute teacher in the Bronx basically ended up saving two of her students lives just by knowing the lingo of the kids who she was responsible for & by stepping up to let them know that she understood & was having no parts of it. A Latino gang member in her class stood up & threatened to take “a buck fifty” from the white female class president during a heated discussion on racism catalyzed by the reading of “A Raisin in the Sun” ; after finding out that she told another student that she did not like Black people. “A buck fifty” – translation: slashing someone in their face. I had no idea that a buck fifty meant more than $1.50, but my cousin is an educator who cares & took the time to understand the life & language of her students even though she had been raised completely differently from these kids- she never threw her hands up & said he/she is not my problem as some educators do because the multitasking between educator, disciplinarian & psychologist can be very overwhelming for many. That day she taught these kids that they could have a heated discussion without it escalating to violence & she stood up as an elder to let them know she was in charge & would quickly snitch/call the authorities on anyone who brought violence/criminal behavior to the class because that was not going to be acceptable behavior as long as she was substituting. These kids are all from different backgrounds in a charter school leadership program because someone had seen some sort of potential in each one of them or wanted to collect a check by placing them in the charter school. Whatever the real reason maybe, this school is deemed a leadership academy & that day they got a teacher who quickly shutdown what had become acceptable/tolerated bad behavior by some in order for everyone to have the opportunity to live up to their individual leadership potential & to be able to fully participate in getting educated! There is a lot of work to be done & we all have a part in it. These videos below are very telling in so many ways & we need to Stop , Look & Listen!

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/04/01_rapmusic.shtml

Instead of Baby having regrets of not making more money off of Lil’ Wayne by not copyrighting the words “Bling Bling”- he should be having regrets of turning a child prodigy onto a self destructive life of drugs & sex by age 11 when he was the adult who this child sought love & guidance from. According 2 American laws Baby should be arrested for this not bragging about it on television. Our society has been way too implicit 2 the delinquency & statutory rape & abuse of our minors-I guess we have come 2 a point of pure anarchy -a society without any respect for laws & human decency sanctioned by the so called adults/elders who are responsible for the raising & upliftment of the future!SMH

This is what a 16 yr old Disney Star looks like nowadays -dancing on a stripper pole on top of an ice-cream truck at the Teen Choice Awards- but we have no idea why our young people are so over sexualized & caught up in all sorts of destructive behaviors.

Rihanna never thought her life would spiral into a Britney Spears type of media chaos- Be careful when you have a good laugh at someone else’s dysfunction & spiral because you never know the pain until you have to walk in their shoes- (min:3:06)